United States-Australia Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act: report

Original publisher: [Washington, D.C. : U.S. G.P.O., 2004] OCLC Number: (OCoLC)56057783 Subject: Free trade -- Australia. Excerpt: ... 15 Reason for change The Committee intends that the provisions of subtitle B be ad-ministered in a manner that is in compliance with U.S. obligations under Article 4.1 of the Agreement. In particular, the Committee expects that the President will implement a transparent process that will serve as an example to our trading partners. For example, in addition to publishing a summary of the request for safeguard relief, the Committee notes that the President plans to make avail-able the full text of the request, subject to the protection of busi-ness confidential data, on the Department of Commerce, Inter-national Trade Administration's website. In addition, the Com-mittee encourages the President to issue regulations on procedures for requesting such safeguard measures, for making its determina-tions under section 322 ( a ), and for providing relief under sections 322 ( b ) and ( c ). The Agreement and implementing bill include a critical cir-cumstance provision which allows provisional safeguard relief to be granted under the textile and apparel safeguard. The Committee notes that this provision was included at Australia's request, and this Agreement is the only FTA negotiated by the United States that includes such a provision. USTR has assured the Committee that this language is not a precedent for future FTAs. The Com-mittee will be mindful of those assurances in future negotiations. Subtitle C: Cases Under Title II of the Trade Act of 1974 ( Section 331 ) Current law The President has no authority under Title II of the Trade Act of 1974 ( ' ' section 201 ' ' ) to exclude Australian articles from the ap-plication of a safeguard remedy. A similar authority is granted with respect to Singaporean articles in section 331 of the United States-Singapore Free Trade Area Implementation Act and to arti-cles from Jordan in section 221 o...